Drone exploration of bat echolocation: A UAV-borne multimicrophone array to study bat echolocation ...

• Main Authors: Jespersen, Christian, Docherty, David, Hallam, John, Albertsen, Carsten, Jakobsen, Lasse
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2022
• Subjects: Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Nyctalus noctula
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13452086; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13452086

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Multimicrophone array techniques offer crucial insight into bat echolocation, yet they severely undersample the environments bats operate in as they are limited in geographic placement and mobility. UAVs are excellent candidates to greatly increase the environments in which such arrays can be deployed, but the impact of UAV noise on recording quality and the UAV's behavioral impact on the bats may affect usability. We developed a UAV-­borne multimicrophone setup capable of recording bat echolocation across diverse environments. We quantify and mitigate the impact of UAV noise on the recording setup and test the recording capability of the array by recording four common Danish bat species: Pipistrellus pygmaeus, Myotis daubentonii, Eptesicus serotinus, and Nyctalus noctula. The UAV produces substantial noise at ultrasonic frequencies relevant to many bat species. However, suspending the array 30 m below the UAV attenuates the noise to levels below the ...